"Can you crank her?" asked Cora to Bess, nodding toward the engine.

"I'll try!"

It needed three tries, but finally the motor started, and the boat surged forward again. Cora, bringing her head up to the seas, noted that Jack had started to turn around to come back to her, but, seeing that the _Pet_ was under way again, had gone on his own course.

The wind continued to blow, the rain never ceased and the storm increased apace. But finally, after a battle with the elements that made the hearts of the girls quail, they pa.s.sed the lighthouse point, and shot around into the quiet and wind-protected waters of the bay. A little later they were chugging into the even calmer cove.

"Oh Cora! So frightened as I have been!" exclaimed Aunt Susan, as the dripping girls trooped up the hill to the bungalow. "Oh, what a storm!"

"But we weathered it!" laughed Cora, shaking back her damp hair. "It was a bit scary at first, but we came out all right. It was fun at the finish."

"I'm never going out again when it's cloudy!" declared Belle. "Never!"

"Oh, you'll get used to it," said Eline.

Dry garments, hot tea, and supper coming in the order named restored in the girls their natural happy dispositions. But the storm continued. It grew worse as darkness advanced, and the wind rose to a gale. The rain came down in torrents, and the boys, in spite of rain coats and umbrellas, were drenched a second time in the short trip from their bungalow to that of the girls, when they came to pay a visit.

"It's a wild night," declared Jack, as he and his chums got ready to go back, about ten o'clock.

"There must be quite a sea on," said Ed.

"I wouldn't want to be out in it," remarked Walter.

"And I beg to be excused," came from Norton.

"Think of the poor sailors," said Eline, softly.

"I tell you what I'd like to do," observed Jack.

"What?" Ed wanted to know.

"Go over to the lighthouse. It must be great up in the lantern room in a storm like this."

"Don't you dare to go!" cried Cora. "It might blow away."

"No danger," said Jack with a laugh. "But I'm not going. Another thing we might do."

"What?" demanded Norton.

"Go out and find a beach patrol. We could walk up and down with him, and maybe sight a wreck."

"Oh, don't speak of a wreck!" begged Bess. "A wreck on such a night would be dreadful."

"This is just the kind of a night when they have wrecks," observed Ed, as a blast of wind and rain shook the bungalow.

As the boys were going out into the storm there came a dull report, reverberating on the night air.

"What was that?" gasped Cora.

"Sounded like a gun," said Jack. "Maybe a ship at sea----"

There was a flash in the sky. It was not lightning, for there was no thunder storm.

"See!" exclaimed Eline.

"The lighthouse," ventured Norton.

"The light is over there," and Ed pointed to the flashing beacon in a different direction.

"Then it's a rocket from some ship in danger," declared Walter. "There goes another!"

It was unmistakably a rocket that went cleaving through the blackness.

It came from off the lighthouse point.

"Some ship is in danger, or maybe off her course," spoke Jack. "Well, we can't do anything, and there's no use getting any wetter. Come on to bed, fellows."

"Oh, the poor people--if that is a wreck," murmured Bess.

"If it was only daylight we might witness some rescues," said Cora. "But at least let us hope it is nothing serious."

It was Rosalie who brought the news next morning. Through the driving rain she came to the girls' bungalow, her face peering out from beneath a sou'wester that was tied under her chin, her feet barely visible beneath the yellow oilskin coat.

"There's a wreck ash.o.r.e!" she cried. "I thought maybe you might like to see it! It's out in front of our light, and they're bringing the crew ash.o.r.e!"

"Can they save them?" asked Cora, clasping her hands.

"Most of 'em, I guess. Want to come?"

"Of course we'll go!" cried Eline. "The boys won't want to miss this!"

CHAPTER XXII

THE RESCUE

Green ma.s.ses of foam-capped water hurling themselves on the sand--thundering and pounding. A spray that whipped into your face with the sting of a lash. The wind howling overhead and picking up handfuls of wet sand, scattering them about to add to the bite of the salt water.

The rain pelting down in torrents. A dull boom, repeated again and again. The hissing of the breakers. And, out in the midst, out in a smother of water, gripped on the sharp rocks that now and then could be seen raising their black teeth through the white foam was the ship--a wreck.

It was this scene that Cora, the other girls, and the boys saw as they hurried out to the lighthouse point. And it was one they never forgot.

They had hurried out when Rosalie brought the news that in the storm of the night a three-masted auxiliary schooner had come too far insh.o.r.e despite the warning of the light.

"Father was up all night tending the lantern, too!" she shouted--she had to shout to be heard above the roar. "I helped him," she added. "But in spite of it the schooner worked in. She couldn't seem to steer properly.

We could see her red and green lights once in a while. Then the current caught her and nothing could save her. She went right on the rocks. Her back's broke, Captain Meeker of the life guards said."

"Can they save the people?" Cora inquired, as she pulled her raincoat more tightly about her, for the wind seemed fairly to whip open the b.u.t.tons.